The Seattle Star Newspaper, November 8, 1921, Page 13

BERR. es. =, ca 53 © » iter The Story of Carol Kennicott BY SINCLAIR LEWIS eur eyes, The sooner she's sent to the schoo! for incorrigible girls down ‘at Sauk Centre, the better for all and—— Won't you just have «@ cup of coffee, Carol dearie, I'm sure 3 won't mind old Aunty Bogart you by your first name m you think how long I've known Will, and I was such a friend of his 4 Tovely mother when she lived here and—-was that cap expensive? t——— Don't you think {t's awful, ‘the way folks talk in this town?” Mrs. Bog hitched her chair P @earer. Her large face, with its dis furbing collection of moles and jand lone black hairs, wrinkled cun. ly. She showed her decayed feat in a repreving smile, and in the confidential stale bedroom scandal ed she b= just don't see how folks can/ carriage. Tucked over them was a/ You | blue woolen cover, prigkly to her| talk and act like they do, @on't know the things that go on under cover. This town—why it's only the religious training I've given Cy that’s kept him so innocent of — things. Just the other day-— I never pay no attention to stories, | Dut I heard it mighty good and it that Harry Haydock is fwarrying on with a» girl that clerks im & store down in Minneapolis, and Juanita not knowing anything ‘pdout it—though maybe it's the judg it of God, because before she mar. Harry ehe acted up with more one boy—— Well, I don't like fae way it, and maybe | ain't up-to ite, like Cy says, but I always be- ‘Beved « lady shouldn't even give “ames to all sorts of dreadful things, ‘Dut just the same I know there was ‘fat least one case where Juanita and & doy—well, they were just drea fal. And—and-——— Then there's that Ole Jenson the grocer, that he's so plaguey smart, and now he made up to a farmer's wife and—— And this awful man Bjornstam that does chores, and Nat Hicks and-——" ‘There was, it seemed. no person in town who was not living a life of me except Mra. Bogart, and nat- iy she resented it. She knew. She had always hap pened to be there. Once, she whis- | pered, she was going by when an indiscreet window-shade had been up a couple of inches. Once HE 1] i 4 3 a Ht -: ie Tir # ls zie 32 Hi fs s - ik BP gs aS acl h i E i i i her own porch and viciously: ‘woman is on the side of 7 » then I have no choice: 1 must be on the side of the devil. ‘t she like me? She too to ‘reform the ‘town’! She criticizes everybody. ‘thinks the men are vulgar and lim. ed! Am I ke her? This is i voice of one who! That evening she did not merely consent to play cribbage with Kennt cott; she urged him to play; and she | worked Up a heetic interest in land | deals and Sam Clark. vir In courtship days Kennicott had shown her a photograph of Nels rom's baby and log cabin, but she had never seen the Erdstroms. | They had become merely “patients | of the doctor.” Kennicott telephoned [her on a mid-December afternoon, | “Want to throw your coat on and | drive out to Erdstrom's with me? | Fairly warm. Nels got the jaun- dice.” | “Oh yea! She hastened to put on woolen stocking», high boots, sweat ‘er, muffler, cap, mittens. The snow was too thick and the ruts frosen too hard for the motor. They drove out in a clumsy high | wrists, and outside of it a buffalo robe, humble and moth-faten now, used ever the bison herds had | streaked the prairie a few miles to the west, | The seattered houses between which they passed in town were | email and desolate in contrast to the expanse of huge snowy yards and wide street. They crossed the! | railroad tracks, and instantly were in the farm country. The big pie bald horses snorted clouds of steam, and started to trot. The carriage squeaked in rhythm, Kennicott jareve with clucks of ere boy, take it easy!" he was thinking, He paid no attention to Carol, Yet it was he who commented, “Pretty nice, over there,” as they ap- proached an grove where shifty winter sunlight quivered In the hal- low between two snow-<drifts, They drove from the natural pral- rie to a cleared district which 20 years ago had been forest. The | country seemed to stretch unchang ing to the North pole: low brush-scraggly bottom, reedy creek, muskrat mound, fields with frozen brown clods thrust up thru the snow. Her ears and nose were pinched: her breath frosted her collar; her fingers ached. “Getting colder,” she sald. “Yup.” That was all their conversation | for three miles. Yet she waa happy. They reached Erdstrem’s «t four, and with a throb she recog nized the courageous venture which had lured her to Gopher Prairie: the cleared fields, furrows among stumps, a log cabin chinked with mud and roofed with dry hay. But Nels had prospered. He used the log cAbin as a barn; and a new house reared up, @ proud, unwise, Gopher Prairie house, the more naked and@ ungraceful in its glossy white paint and pink trimmings Every tree had been cut down. The house was so unsheltered, so bat- tered by the wind, so bieakly thrust out into the harsh clearing, that Carol shivered. But they were wel- comed warmly enough in the kitct.- en, with its new plaster, its Diack and jel range, its cream separator in a corner, Mrs. Erdstrom begged her to sit in the parlor, where there was « phonograph and an oak and leather @avenport, the prairie farmer's Proofs of social progress, but she dropped down by the kitchen stove ‘and insisted, “Piease don't mind me.” Whea Mrs, Erdstrom had followed the doctor out of the room Carol venene4 bo My friendly way at the grni cupboard, the framed Lutheran Konfirmations Attest, the traces of fried eggs and sausages on the dining the wall, and a jewel pre senting not only a lithographic young woman with cherry lips, an4 & Swedish ment of Axel Egge's grocery, but also a ther- i; a boy in gingham shirt and faded corduroy trousers, but large eyed, firm-mouthed, wide-browed. He then peeped in again, bit- ing bis Knuckles, turning his should er toward her in shyness, Didn't she remember—what was it?—Kennieott sitting beside her at Fort Snelling, urging, “See how scared that baby is. Needs sme woman like you,” Magic had fluttered about her then—magic of sunset and cool air ~ —— “I take the eggs along when I go,” he said But Mr. Fifteen-Spine Stickle hack didn't need to wofty about Busy Boar-Fish coming and eating UD the eggs while his wife was away, for Mr. Boar-Fish was having troubles of his own. As the Twins Pasved his front door, wasn't he fuss dng around, too, about not being able to leave his\children long enough to hunt his supper. For, and ien’t it funny, Mr. Boar-Fish was as much afraid of his fierce little neighbor as Mr. Stickleback was of him, neither ing about the other. it poor, dear Mr, Goby was the ‘worst of all. He, too, was a shore fish and lived right along there near the others. Of course, be might | have closed down his roof, and gone And hunted his wife, for Mr. Goby the eggs, which would soon be ag Sobles, tucked away in a hol- ae the sand under a great ll, But he was afraid of Bivetidhes, Jonz and thin, like grass-blades, for they could lift up the shell just as easy and slip their mouths under, and Mr. Goby knew it. To say nothing of Spike Star- Fish, who could pick up a cockle shell with his suckers as easily as you could pick up a raisin cookie with your fingers. Yes, poor, dear | Mr. Goby decided that he'd stay at | home and starve to death before he'd let anything happen to his children | But he was cross just the same about |\Mra. Goby gadding, Nancy and Nick went on to Mr. Pipe-¥ish’s house, but he was away. | They met him, however, hunting for his wife. “I take the eggs along when I go,” said he, tapping his pocket. “Then they're safe.” The kid- [dies looked on in wonder, for Mr. |Pipe-Fish looked too thin to move himself around, let alone a, batch of ones. What queer ‘uns the Wiggle fins were! (To Be Continued) (Copyright, 1921, by Seattle Star} | name? THE DOINGS OF THE DUFFS ‘TOM,! BOUGHT ‘You A CHANCE TICKET ON A BOX OF FIVE HUNDRED FINE CIGARS TODAY- AMAN WAS RAFFLING ‘THEM OFF ~ | OUGHTA SEEN [T= SLIM WUT HERS AN’ => Llama ® aren and the curiosity of lovers. She held out her hands as much to that sanctity as to the boy. He edged into the room, doubt fully sucking bis thumb. “Hello,” she said. “What's your | “Hee, hee, heer “You're quite right. I agree with) you. Silly people like me always agk children their names.” | “Hee, hee, hee! “Come here and I'll tell you the) story af—well, 1 don't know what it will be about, but it will have a stim heroine and a Prince Charm ing.” He stood stoleally while she spun nonsense, His giggling ceased. She was winning him. ‘Then the tele-) phene bell—two long rings, one short. Mrs. Erdstrom galloped into the room, shrieked into the transmitter, “Vout Yes, yes, dis Erdstrom's place! Heh? Oh, you: vant de doctor? Kennicott appeared, growled Into the telephon “Well, what do you want? Ob.! hello Dave; what do you want?) Which Morgenroth’s? Adolph's? All right. Amputation? Yuh, I see, Say, Dave, get Gus to harness up and take my surgical kit down there— and have him take some chloroform. Tl go straight down from here. May not get home tonight . fou can get ma at Adolph’s. Huh? No,/ Carrie can give the anesthatic, 1) guess, G'by. Huh? No; tell me about that tomorrow—too damn many people always listening in on this farmers’ line.” He turned to Carol “Adolph Morgemroth, farmer ten miles soutl- west of town, got his arm crushed —fizh his cow-shed and a post; caved Ingon him—smashed him up) | pretty bad—may have to amputate, Dave Dyer says. Afraid we'll have to go right from here. Darn sorry! to @rag you clear down there with! me—" “Please do. Don't mind me a bit” “Think you could give the an thetic? Usually have my driver do it.” “If youll tell me how.” “All right. Say, did you hear me putting one over on these goats that are always rubbering in on| party-wires? 1 hope they heard mo!) Well. . . '. Now, Bessie, don't! you worry about Nels. He's met ting along all right. Tomorrow you or one of the neighbors drive mi a get this preseription filled at) ‘er’s, Give him a teaspoonful) every four hours, + Goodby. Helo! Here's the little fellow! My Lord. Bessie, it ain't ible this is the fellow that used to be #0 sickly?) Why, say, he's a great big strap: ping Svenska now—going to be big ger n’ bis daddy! Kennicott'’s biuffness made the child squirm with a delight which| Carol could not evoke. It was a humble wife who followed the busy doctor out to the carriage, and her ambition was not to play Rach- maninoff better, nor to build town halls, but to chuckle at babies. ‘The sunset was merely a flush of rose on a dome of silver, with oak twigs and thin poplar branches against it, but a silo on the horizon changed from a red tank to @ tower | of violet misted over with gray, The! purple road vanished, and without lighta, in the darkness of a world destroyed, they swayed on— toward nothing. It was a bumpy cold way to the Morgenroth farm, and she bed asleep when they arrived. Here was no glaring new house) with a proud phonograph, but # low whitewashed kitchen smelling | of cream and cabbage, Adgiph Mor- | genroth was lying on @ couch in the} rarely used dining-room. His heavy | work-scarred wife was shaking her hands tn anxiety. Carol felt that Kennicott would 4o something magnificent and start-| ling. But he was casual. He greet- ed the man, “Well, well, Adolph, | have to fix you up, eh?y Quietly,| fo the wife, “Hat die drug store my | schwartzé bag hier geschickt? So—| schon. Wie viel Uhr ist ‘8? Sieben?} Nun, lassen uns ein wenig supper zuerst haben. Got any of that good veer left—giebt’s noch Bier?’ He had supped in four minutes. His coat off, his sleeves rolled up. he was scrubbing hig hands in @ tin basin in the sink, using the bar of yellow kitchen - Carol‘ had not dared to look Into the farther room while she labored over the supper of beer, rye bread, moist corn-beef and cabbage, set on Ge kitchen table, The man in there was groaning, In her one glance she had seen that his blue flannel shirt was open at a corded tobacco-brown neck, the hollows of which were sprinkled with thin black and gray hairs, He was cov- ered with a sheet, like a corpse, and outside the sheet was his right arm, | SUPPOSE SEATTLE STAR Tom Takes Too Much for Granted HOW MUCH WAS ‘THe | ‘THE TICKET WAS TICKET P WHAT KIND. OF CIGARS WERE THEY P ONLY “TWO DOLLARS- THEY WERE IN A NICE BOX AND HAD THE He PRETTIEST. COULDN'T STAND S — —1 THouser THE CABE To He Wad Recom- * * Page ‘3S. T4Ake OWSER BY CONDO THEY Sat He's GooP One. Hi 515 PULLEN AND WULLEN “Our train,” the little lady went on, “was a litfle unusual in that it had so many Dutch people in it. “There were Pullen and Wullen, both Dutchmen, one hav- ing a family of nine childrén and the other a family of 11. And there was an Eisenhart and his family besides, as Dutch as could be. “My father was captain of the wagon train and everybody was supponed to go as he directed and do what he said, but those two fat little Dutchmen had minds of their own; stubborn and ignorant minds they were, too. “If father said (after studying his map and looking as far ahtad as Hie could), “There is a fork in the road here. I think we will turn to the right,’ tose two men were sure to say: “ "No, no, ve tink ve turn to the left vonce.’ “And when the wngon train reached the Platte river there were two fords, That is,” she ex- plained to the childrén, “two places where the water was shal- low enough and the river bed smooth enough to allow the wagons to go across thru the water. “Well.” she went on with her story, “father stopped the train and began to find out for himself which one we should take, “'We must be very careful | ns ow wT here,’ he enid, ‘for I have been told that there is much quicksand at this point.’ “80, carefully he tried them both as well he could and told the men who were driving to take the upper ford. “But no,’ Pullen and Wullen argued, “vhy should ve not take this lower ford, it seems to us so much more goodt, ve not go by your upper fordt, ve take the fordt ve please.’ “But they did not go them- selves; they sent out each man, one wagon, into the river. “The drivers looked, sober and anxious as they cracked their long whips over the backs of the oxen, and the great‘clumsy wagons ra\ ‘tied and creaked as they began their slow progress into the stream. “We all watched them go, we saw the big oxen wade in, first knee deep, then floundering a lit- tle-saw the water swirling up about their bodies—saw the great wagon—wheels sink out of sight, heard the ories of the men, heard them calling to their oxen, heard them calling for help. “But no one could help them. Down and down and down they went, sucked under by the treach- erous sands, and before any help could reach them there was no sign of men or teams or wagons, only two battered hats floating off down the slow-moving river. (To Be Continued) hehehe wrapped in towels stained with blood. But Kennicott strode into the ot)- er room gaily, and she followed him, With surprising delicacy in his large fingers. he unwrapped the towels and revealed an arm which, below the elbow, was a mass of blood and raw flesh. The man bellow The room grew thick about her; she was very seasick; she fled to a chair in the kitchen. Thru the haze of nausea she heard Kennieott grum- bling, “Afraid 4t will have to come off, Adolph, What did you do? Fall on a reaper blade? We'll fix It right up. Carrie! Carol!" She couldn’t—she couldn't get up. Then she was up, her knees like water, her stomach revolving a thousand times a second, her eyes filmed, her ears full of roaring. She couldn't reach the dining-room. She was going.to faint. Then she was in the dining-room, leaning against the wall, trying to smile, flushing jhot. and colg along her chest and |sides, while Kennicott mumbled, “Say, help Mrs, Morgenroth and me carry him in on the kitchen table. No, first go out and shove those two tables together, and put a blanket on them and a clean sheet.” It was salvation to push tho heavy tables. to scrub them, @ You'D FALL FOR ANYTHING HAVE THIS HOUSE MARKED ~ WERE IN SUCH A PRETTY Box Too! You KNOW YoU CAN PUT CABBAGE IN A PRETTY BASKET BUT IT'S STILL ‘THEY MusT ‘THEY CABBAGE- ANOTHER THING You DON’T SMOKE | OUR BOARDING HOUSE NIPPY ANDTHE CHILL AIR HAS ME BENT UP IN BED LIKE A FOLDING LADDER, SO I WAS BY ALLMA wt WELL, DON’T GET ALL EXCITED ABOUT IT, YOU MAY NOT WIN THEM! CHILLY? HAM = WY HY PET CANARY SAL] WOULD BAKE. BI“TART ROOM OF YOURS! WONDERIN’ IF YoU HAD AN EXTRA BLANKET I COULD TVE NEVER SEEN SUCH PRIMA DONNAS AS YoU MEN!» You'LL BE. WOLLERING FOR DISTILLED Confessions of a Movie Star (Copyright, 1921, Seattle Star) CHAPTER V—I HEAR CISSY IS IN LOVE BEGIN HERE TODAY ‘The story ls told by Mag Scott, a girl om his girl stare should have had nets.” Then there are other actors and actresses, GO ON WITH THE sToRY “Did Recamier keep her beauty until 70 because she couldn't tell sin when she saw it?” I asked. I was joking, but Cissy Sheldon looked jong and soberly at the spot where Ginette had disappeared before he answered: “Some little theory! Explaining why some girls lose their good looks early! A sharp summons to the set and a crowd of nervous, pushing extras fended our conversation. Later, in another interval of wait- [ing off scene, scraps of conversation between Ginette and Rose Montillon, our character woman, floated to me. exact in placing the sheet. Her head cleared; she was able to look calmly in at her husband and tho farmwife while they undressed the walling man, got him into a cl#an nightgown, and washed his arm, Kennicott came to lay out his tn struments, She realized that, with no hospital facilities, yet with no worry about it, her husband—her husband—was going to perform 4 surgical operation, that miraculous boldness of which one read in stories about famous surgeons. She helped them to move Adolph into the kitehen. The man was .n such a funk that he would not use his legs, He was heavy, and smelled of swent and the stable. But she put her arm about his whist, her sleek head by his chest; she tugged at him; she clicked her tongue in imitation of Kennicott's cheerful noises, When Adolph was on the table Kennicott laid a hemispheric steel and cotton frame on his face; sug: gested to Carol, “Now you sit here at his head and keep the ether drip- ping—about this fast, see? I'll watch his breathing. Look who's here! Real anesthetist! Ochsner hasn't got a better one! Class, eh? Now, now, Adolph, take it easy. ‘This won't hurt you a bit. Put you af nice and asleep and it won't hurt a bit. Schweig' mal! Rald edhirtt mab grat wie ein Kind. ig lad geht’s besser!” Ginette was talking excitedly, arily. She seemed to want everybody to hear. “Cissy's a piker!* she averred. “So—he's passed you up, has he?” Rose giggled. “For what, this time?” “For good-this time, dearie! Haven't you guessed? Haven't you seen? Cissy is in lover’ “Sure! I'm not such a dumbbell! But SHE can't see! Say, Ginette! Is the little kid a saint? Or a plain fool?” “I hope to tell you!" Ginette prides herself on her slang. “Now just you tie this, honey! #Cissy wouldn’t get so blame virtuous unless he had fell for a girl he couldn't get! I was immediately _ interested. Whom couldn't Cissy get? Who had reformed him? I resolved to ask Rose. But my own little portion of movie martyrdom made it impossible for mé to put the question to her for a 2 That Saturday I had to do more close-ups than I expected in order As she let the ether drip, nerv- ously trying to keep the rhythm that Kennicott had indicated, Carol stared at her husband with the abandon of hero-worship. He shook his head. “Bad lght— bad light. Here, Mrs. Morgenroth, you stand right here and hold this lamp. Hier, und dieses—dieses lamp halten—so!” By that streaky glimmer he worked, swiftly, at ease. The room was still, Carol tried to look at him, yet not look at the seeping blood, the crimson slash, the vicious scalpel, The ether fumes were sweet, choking. Her head seemed to be floating away from her body, Her arm was feeble, It was not the blood, but the grating of the surgical saw on the living bone that broke her, and she knew that she had been fight ing off nausea, that She was beat- en. Sho was lost in dtzainess, Shi heard Kennicott’s volee; “Sick? ‘Trot outdoors couple min- utes. Adolph will stay under now.” She was fumbling at a door-knob which whirled In faulting circles; she was on the stoop, gasping, fore: ing air into her chest, ‘her hi clearing. AS she returned she ight the scene as a whole: the cavernous kitchen, two milk-cans a Teaden patch by the wall, hams dangling from a beam, bars of light at the stove door, and in the ‘cen tex, illuminated by @ small glass a to complete a play for rushed lease. In consequence of too exposures to the fierce reached home with a pair inflamed eyes. Motherdear knew fust for my é¢yes. First there was & sl of boracic solution, then a coating the beaten white of egg, tepid compresses, the treatment Te peated at intervals. While I relaxed on my bed as well as I could, considering the fort, I meditated on Cissy, what knew about him personally and I guessed about him from Gi! spitefulness, ay She couldn't have been so horrid unless she were jealous. She wouldn’t have been jealous unless in love with the Apollo of the pany. ; I kept on thinking of Mr. Cyrus. Sheldon because he seemed to be the only person sufficiently spectacular and dramatic to keep my mind from the excruciating pain in my eyes. (To Be Continued) ; lamp held by a frightened stout bending over sheet—the surgeon, his bare daubed with blood, his hands, pale-yellow rubber .gloves, the tourniquet, his face without emotion save when he threw up his head and clucked at the farm wife, “Hold that light steady just a seo ond more—noch blos ein wenig.” “He speaks @ vulgar, common, in correct German of life and death and birth and the soil. I read the French and ‘German of sentimental lovers and Christmas garlands, And I thought that it, was I who had the culture! ¢ worshipped as she returned to her place. After.a time he snapped, “That's enough. Don't give him any more ether,” He was concentrated on tying an artery. His gruttness ~ seemed heroic to her, As he shaped the flap of flesh she murmured, “Oh,, you are. Won @erful!” ‘He was surprised. “Why, a cinch, Now if it had last week—-Get me some more ter. Now last week I had a dj with an ooze in the peritoneal ity, and by golly if it wasn’t a stomach ulcer that I hado't sum pected and— There. Say, I . tainty am sleepy, Let's turn m here. Too late to drive home. tastes to (Continued tomorrow) eS